Christina Loya is a third-generation Chicana with deep roots in the heartland, having grown up in Olathe, Kansas. She holds a BA and MA in History from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Go Roos! In 2024, her research was featured on KCUR's A People's History of Kansas City in an episode titled, “Mariachi Estrella Will Always Be Stars.” Her work explores how first- and second-generation Mexican American women participated in community building and adapted religious structures to create new identities from the 1940s through the early 1980s in the heartland, with a particular focus on the historic Oakland neighborhood of Topeka.
She is also excited to have her thesis included in an upcoming edited collection titled The Understudied Latinos in the Midwest: Missouri and the Bi-state Cities of Kansas City and St. Louis, which aims to tell the stories of Latinx/e people in the heartland. As a Chicana growing up in the Kansas City area, she did not learn her own history. Her personal and professional work is steadfastly dedicated to reversing that trend. She is committed to documenting and preserving the rich cultural history of Mexican American/Chicanx people in the Kansas City area, with a particular interest in documenting women’s stories.
Currently, Christina serves as Public Historian and Archivist at the Mattie Rhodes Cultural Center, a role she began in April 2024. She works with the Hand in Hand Folk Art Collection, which focuses on art from Latin America, and contributes to a variety of projects, including oral histories such as Westside Stories, which highlights the history of Chicanx/e people on the Westside and their contributions to the area, despite significant neighborhood changes and gentrification.
Christina resides in Kansas City, Kansas, with her longtime partner John, who is a storyteller of a different kind. John runs Ground Control, a David Bowie-themed bar located in the basement of The Belfry at 15th and Grand. Together, they share their lives with three silly dogs—Eleanor, Dottie, and Tilly—who truly run the household.
